Sabtu, 21 Desember 2013

Barbie & The Rockers: Out of This World


This is a two part animated video of America's favourite doll, Barbie. It's based on a particular line of Barbie dolls called Barbie and the Rockers, and the two part special was shown on syndication in 1987, and was eventually released to VHS later on. I used to own the VHS copy of this when I was about 4 or 5 years old in the late 90s & early 2000s, and I actually used to like it. I don't know why, but I did. Maybe it was because I loved Barbie growing up, playing with the dolls and accessories but as I've matured, my opinions have drastically changed! Now I can't stand her, and she's just a bad influence to girls everywhere, telling them all you should care about is being an obnoxious valley girl and shopping for clothes. Well, at least she's not as bad as the Bratz, but that's for another time (yeah, I'll review the CGI Bratz movies in the future and boy do I have lots to say about them!) Anyway, can Barbie and her friends be able to rock me out of this world by actually having brains, or did it hit as low as Barbie's valley girl appeal? Let's find out! (by the way, I'll do a top 10 Worst CGI Barbie movies list after that Barbie Movie Month I did a couple of months ago!)

Plot: The story involves Barbie and her band doing concert for world peace in outer space and...here's the biggest problem of the movie. There's no plot. No antagonist, no conflict, no goal to achieve and there's nothing to be developed. You could argue that the going back in time bit is a conflict, but that mostly consists of nothing but trying on clothes and singing songs from the 50s! Nothing is logic in this, like how could Barbie be an ambassador of world peace if she does nothing but perform (seriously, if she's so perfect, why doesn't she just quit and find a cure for cancer?) and why did Barbie sporadically announce the concert in space without being prepared or talking to her bandmates first? Seriously, Barbie just thinks she's so perfect, and everyone around the world treats her as if she's some sort of goddess! And the explanation of going back in time is beyond ridiculous and stupid, and they try to do a subplot with the scientist's daughter being friends with Barbie and the bandmates, but it goes nowhere because this movie just doesn't want to focus on anything with substance! The dialogue is just lame and clumsy, and oddly, the sound editing is terrible! There is literally nothing in this and it's stupid, ridiculous, superfluous and vapid! It's just a cash in for the dolls back in the 80s (which would unfortunately happen again now since 2001) and there's no substance at all! It's essentially a boring rip off of Jem and the Holograms, only even more stupid! Yeah, so the plot is virtually non existent, and you can tell the writers didn't want to put any effort in, and it was as if they were thinking they knew what little girls liked, which was a ton of montages of bland characters singing and changing clothes!

Animation: The animation is incredibly cruddy! The character designs look rough and they look as if the 80s threw up on them! The character animation is low quality, and most of the time, the lip synching is off and for some reason, they'd loop or replay bits of animation, clearly showing how low the budget is! I'm not kidding, they literally replay one bit of animation like, 5 times just as filler! The editing is completely terrible, with very odd transitions and during one montage, they'd rotate bits of Barbie's friends acting like zombies and tilting their heads from left to right to the camera! Overall, it's very, very lazy. In fact, it's insultingly lazy. How the hell did I used to like this crap?!

Characters: I'm just gonna cut to the chase and say every single character is one dimensional and has no personality whatsoever! Barbie is just the perfect girl who can master anything perfectly like driving a space shuttle and having a perfect fashion sense! Ken, her boyfriend is literally just there to tell her how beautiful she looks. No seriously, that's all he does! The rest of her bandmates are the token red head, brunette and black best friends, or just Derek who have no purpose whatsoever! Actually, Derek seems to be the only one with a brain cell as he's at first apprehensive about performing in space, but of course, he goes along with the stupid idea! Every single character is bland, boring, generic and all they do is tell Barbie how perfect she is! I don't care for any of them at all, and clearly the writers didn't either! It doesn't really help that the voice acting is completely terrible and clearly all the actors wanted out of this was their paychecks!

Songs: The songs are as bland and boring as everything in this! They all sound like generic 1980s music, but not fun or original! Heck, a few of them are just bland cover versions of songs like Do You Believe in Magic or Do You Wanna Dance, and they have no purpose whatsoever! The original songs are annoying and most of the time, I can't make out the lyrics because of how bad the sound editing is! I mean, the one for world peace just tells everyone to rock (I think, that's how bad the sound editing is)I don't have much to say about the songs or music because of how boring it was and that all of it was essentially useless filler to make it 45 minutes!
God, I hate this! Barbie and the Rockers is stupid, ridiculous, pointless and boring! The plot, if you can call it that, makes no sense, the animation is very low quality, the characters are bland and one dimensional and the songs are bland and forgettable! I don't understand how I liked this as a kid, I just can't stand it now!
Story: 1/10

Animation:1/10
Characters:1/10
Songs:1/10
Overall: 1/10

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